Crowded Teeth: Their Impact On Dental Health & How To Correct Them
Do you ever feel like you have too many teeth, or like your teeth are squashed together? Chances are you have crowded teeth, a structural condition that is determined either by either having too many teeth for the size of your jaw, or having an imbalance between the size of your teeth and the available space in your mouth. Crowded teeth can be something that develops at a young age, or something that can occur in adulthood when wisdom teeth erupt. Other causes of crowded teeth are tongue thrust and the gum and teeth developing at different paces.
Read on to learn how this dental issue is fixed, and why getting it corrected is so important to your dental health.
Dental Issues Caused by Crowded Teeth
Crowded teeth come with their own set of challenges, and they aren’t just aesthetic. Some of the functional issues crowded teeth cause are a higher risk of developing cavities and decay, as well as having bad breath. When teeth are squashed together in your mouth, you won’t be able to easily access them with your toothbrush or dental floss, meaning that some parts of your mouth won’t get sufficiently cleaned. This means there’ll be acid and dental bacteria in parts you can’t reach, which can compromise your dental health even when you’re doing everything right.
Crowded teeth also make the structure of your teeth more delicate as some teeth will be more active than others when you eat and chew. This also makes your teeth very injury prone. You can also end up with bad chewing habits, which can lead to digestion issues.
How to Correct Crowded Teeth
Here’s the great news: corrective dentistry and orthodontics can correct crowded teeth, and realign the structure of your jaw so that your teeth are spaced out more evenly.
Braces
Braces are the most common way to address crowded teeth. They fix the issue by allowing the jaw to expand over time so that the teeth are spaced more evenly and distributed correctly. You would be required to wear them for up to 2 years, and by the end of the treatment, the teeth wouldn’t be squashed together anymore. If the crowding of your teeth affects several teeth, braces would be a good solution.
Retainers
Retainers can also be used to correct a crowding problem if the issue is only impacting one of two teeth. Instead of wearing braces first and then retainers, the patient would wear retainers for a time determined by the orthodontist, and afterwards the teeth would have improved placement.
Tooth Extraction
If your jaw space isn’t large enough for expansion to work, extraction would be the other option. In this case, the teeth that are creating the issue would be extracted. Of course the orthodontist would have to determine the right teeth to remove so that it doesn’t affect your ability to bite and chew food or lead to other dental alignment issues.
Lower Teeth Crowding Treatment
You might be wondering if crowding on lower teeth is fixed differently, and the answer is no. Lower teeth crowding is actually more common than upper teeth, so the treatments above are the gold standard of correcting the issue.
In order to determine the right approach to correct your crowded teeth, your orthodontist would have to assess your jaw to see if it is large enough to accommodate expansion, and which dental appliance would work best for you. Our team is very experienced at helping patients solve this problem, and we’d love to help so don’t hesitate getting in touch with us.
